If Jesus had thought he’d be forced to watch this when he rose again, it’s quite likely that he would have stayed in his grave: David Brooks moderates a discussion with strategists and writers on the future of conservatism and the Republican Party at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research Panelists include Megan McArdle, Reihan Salam, Josh Barro, Avik Roy, and Yuval Levin. (h/t Reader J)

https://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/balloon_juice_header_logo_grey.jpg00Doug!https://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/balloon_juice_header_logo_grey.jpgDoug!2014-04-20 09:52:472014-04-20 10:02:34Splattered all over Manhattan

This being an important religious weekend for Christians and Jews, President Obama took a break from his typically-partisan Saturday radio address to offer Easter and Passover greetings.

Sen. Lamar Alexander on behalf of the Republican Party? Not so much.

“These holy days have their roots in miracles that took place long ago,” Obama said. “And yet, they still inspire us, guide us, and strengthen us today. They remind us of our responsibilities to God and, as God’s children, our responsibilities to one another. “

Sen. Alexander declared that “lifting the big wet blanket of Obama regulations will enable our free enterprise system to create plenty of jobs.”

I have asked myself this very question many times. The only answer I have is he makes a buck off of it. I generally like him, but his insistence that he’s a conservative ring rather hollow in the face of his actual stated policy positions.

Barro is in some sense the “fantasy moderate conservative” the beltway types crave except they don’t have any understanding of what that is anymore. Old-style conservative technocratic solutions to problems would actually be surprisingly liberal today. The “bi-partisan consensus” on addressing issues is always some unholy super expensive program that funnels money to rich people in exchange for giving some scraps to poor people, because modern conservatives are just about funneling money to rich people.. Barro’s conservative in that he thinks that if you want to help poor people you should just give them some money.

I would argue that 21st century liberalism is more aligned with some of the more classical definitions of the word conservative. After all, we are trying, in many ways, to conserve the status quo left to us from the 20th century.

Actually, if all conservatives were like David Brooks, it would be splendid because they’d spend all their energies whipping up Whiggy pudding instead of brewing poisonous Tea, and giving TED talks at Aspen instead of THUG speeches about wrecking any possibility of constructive governance. I haven’t tortured myself trying to watch more than a few snippets of the linked conservative talk-panel, but I’d speculate it’s a good possibility that “Bengazi!” and “IRS scandal!” aren’t ever mentioned, even elliptically. THE REAL POINT is that if all conservatives were like this panel, they’d spend all their time babbling in harmless irrelevancy to the rest of us. The only potential danger from David Brooks is the extent to which his presence enables some deluded Democrats and moderately progressive folk into thinking a reasonable, constructive dialogue is possible with modern-day conservatives where we can somehow meet them half-way in a mutually acceptable (if imperfect) fashion.

What’s the point of this whole exercise in futility? The participants will all spout academic jargon for hours and hours, then conclude that the party’s messaging needs to be improved. Then Brooks will gush over the profundity of the conclusion, and everyone will go home thinking they’ve accomplished something.

Oh damn, I gave away the ending, didn’t I? Well, look on the bright side — now you don’t have to watch it.

Okay, let’s look at this group and the GOP – Josh Barro – gay, Reihan Salam – swarthy even if he’s not he looks musleemy and his name is fer sure musleemy, Avik Roy – brown person taking white males’ jobs – also probably not Christian, Megan McArdle – married working woman with no kids – taking up white male job and not procreating, David Brooks – NYT and NY Joo – technically they want him dead after the rapture. So what do all these people have in common? The GOP doesn’t want them.

@Tiny Tim: I’ve read Josh Barro’s stuff even before he was at the NYT and coming on MSNBC. I was genuinely surprised he was labeled a conservative. At most he’s an old fashioned Rockefeller Republican – think Jacob Javits, Millicent Fenwick, Ed Brooks.

@DougJ:
So he can vote republican and convince himself not to throw up doing it?
As several have stated, CASH.
On a bet? That he lost badly and was given the choice to stand in front of the Washington Monument and shave his balls or this. He chose the greater of two evils.

It’s all kind of pointless. As it currently exists, the GOP is funded by a relatively small number of rich right wing cranks. Elderly reactionaries and the Christian Right make up the core of its electoral base. And it relies on institutional advantages such as gerrymandering and voter suppression to maintain its power. All these elements make it resistant to reform – they can’t expand without breaking their current base.

So the current GOP will not be reformed until it collapses. If current trends continue, the elderly part of the base will die off and population trends will make it difficult to maintain gerrymandering and other institutional advantages after the next census. But until then there is little incentive to reform – the GOP is in win now mode. I don’t see any point in nattering about reforming the GOP until after the 2024 presidential race.

What really enrages me about that passage is the hyphen between “typically” and “partisan.” When did it become acceptable to put hyphens between adverbs and adjectives? It now seems to be New York Times house style.

ARGHHH! The disease is spreading! And I first noticed it when my husband got back a copyedited manuscript from the University of Chicago Press. They had stuck in hyphens between adverbs and adjectives all over the manuscript. Then I started seeing it in the Times.

@brettvk: He’s jewish. I have no idea how I even know. He must have mentioned it in one of his Diane Rehm appearances. It’s in his wikipedia entry. Speaking of Diane Rehm, she had on a guy earlier this week who’s written a John Wayne biography. I didn’t listen to the whole thing but it was kind of funny because he had several people email/tweet about his WWII deferments/chickenhawkiness. The biographer was obviously an admirer of Wayne and kind of bs’d his way out of the questions.

I didn’t listen to the whole thing but it was kind of funny because he had several people email/tweet about his WWII deferments/chickenhawkiness.

Apparently one of the reasons Wayne was so hawkish about the Vietnam War was that his friends and colleagues who did go to WWII (especially John Ford) rode him really hard about all of his deferments. IMO, he could (somewhat) justify his deferments since he already had 4 kids to support by the time the war started, but his guilt at not going really fueled a lot of his later war hawk positions.

In a 1971 Playboy interview, Wayne said: “We can’t all of a sudden get down on our knees and turn everything over to the leadership of the blacks. I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility. I don’t believe in giving authority and positions of leadership to irresponsible people.” Wayne was also asked his opinion of Indians after wasting so many of them in the movies. He said: “I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country from them, if that’s what you’re asking. Our so-called stealing of this country from them was just a matter of survival.”

@brettvk: There are several jokes, all along the line the Anglicanism is the route that many hyper-assimilated upper-class Jews take. For example, “dress British, think Yiddish”. There is another longer one that I am not able to tell, since the punch line requires a knowledge of Hebrew that I don’t have.